My wife and I are newly
returned from a bus tour of Spain. Among
our companions were a husband and wife of Coptic Christian origin. Recent Egyptian immigrants to Australia, they
were vehement critics of Barack Obama.
These fellow tourists were
livid at how casually our president abandoned their co-religionists. In their view, in order to promote the Arab
Spring, he allowed the Muslim Brotherhood to murder and harass the Copts. Instead of standing up for justice, he
betrayed America’s friends.
Another of our travelling
buddies was an Iranian immigrant to the U.S.
He too was outraged that Obama did not support the “good” Persians. Rather than provide encouragement for the
many Iranians who love America, he toadied up the mullahs who hate us.
Meanwhile, as a Jew, I am
sensitive to how frequently Barack disregards Israeli interests. Although he claims to be a friend of
Israel—with friends like this who needs enemies? Clearly, the Iranian deal exposes the Jewish
state to obliteration in a nuclear holocaust.
Others betrayed by Obama
include the Ukrainians, the Cubans, the Syrians, the Eastern Europeans, and the
Iraqis. Relying on promises from our
chief executive is plainly a fool’s errand.
His assurances are obviously as substantive as a sneeze in the wind.
Worse yet is the treatment that
our betrayer-in-chief has meted out to his own people. He undermined their health care, despite
assertions he would improve it; damaged race relations, rather than brought
people together; and undercut the constitution ostensibly to advance social
justice.
Now he has further shredded
our founding document by abdicating our sovereignty to the United Nations. Instead of allowing congress to provide
advice and consent for an international treaty, he mangled the English language
by insisting that a treaty in not a “treaty.”
No doubt its import also depends on the meaning of the word “is.”
Obama wanted to be a
transformative president in the sense of making a major difference. In this, he has succeeded. None of his predecessors managed to so
profoundly betray our national heritage.
Why then does he retain
supporters? The answer is that these
folks seem to fall into several categories:
·
African-Americas remain loyal because they
identify with him. They fear that if
they become turncoats, they will be the next victims.
·
America-haters continue to admire him because
they too believe our nation is so corrupt it deserves to be taken down a peg. If our interests are hurt, we warrant what we
get.
·
Naïve idealists stay the course on the
assumption that if we are nice to evil people, they will miraculously mutate
into allies. It is merely a matter of
giving them a chance.
·
Then there are the political hacks. They will remain dedicated to their party
leader irrespective of what he does. For
them, their careers are more important than the fate of the nation.
·
Lastly there are those disengaged souls who do
not realize they have been betrayed.
When they deign to tune in, they are so captivated by the political
theater that they applaud any good show.
We have evidently not been
sufficiently harmed so as to be as irate as my tour companions. While we are less wealthy or secure than we
might otherwise be, we are not yet as impoverished as the Greeks or as
repressed as the Russians. We are thus too
comfortable to be infuriated by presidential disloyalty.
Nonetheless, our turn may be
coming. That Iranian bomb—the one they
were never supposed to get—might one day fall on us and/or our friends. Or far away religious repression could, in
our case, be converted into anti-religious repression. What was formerly inconceivable has certainly
become less so.
People who are not vigilant
in protecting their freedoms lose them.
Likewise people who do not notice when they have been betrayed get
swindled out of house and home. Will
that be our fate? Will our future
parallel that of expatriate Copts and Iranians?
Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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